001Good evening. I call the March 5th, 2026 special school board meeting to order. It is 5:02 p.m. We are in conference room C of the Fiser Administration building at 12121 West North Avenue. And I will call the role. Miss Brazinski. >> Yes. Here. >> Mr. Brower >> here. >> Miss Bach >> here. >> Mr. Morris >> here. >> Miss Haml Rond >> here. >> I'm here. Mr. Wat here >> here. >> All right. We will go to item two, review of school growth plans. And we will start with the Bell R. Phillips school growth plan. Thank you for being here. I >> think it's WBA. >> Sorry, you're right. Hey, excuse a WDA school growth fund. >> It's all good. Thank you. Um, I had some facetime with the board. It's January 26, so it's
002good to be back, everyone. My name is Dean Hoist. I'm administrator of Watossa Virtual Academy. Earlier today, I had the opportunity to be part of two previous events that elevated students at their best, as well as the adults who care and support those students. The first event was at the Bell Phillips Center. It was the grand opening of the brand new expansion of the restorative pathways program, an evolution of space surroundings programming for students who have been adjudicated. There were dignitaries and individuals from local and state government, partner organizations and entities such as WA school district and microphones, cameras and news crews to cover the event and emphasize the importance of the day. The space celebrated not for the physical but the aspirational, the hope, healing, accountability and growth of young people. The second event
003was the GED option 2 student recognition lunch. Now the GED option 2 program in Wawaossa is a way for students to show competency through passing the GED subtests and finishing other programming graduation requirements. They are then able to earn a Watossa school district diploma. There were no news crews at GTO 2. The dignitaries at the GTO 2 event were probably the students themselves. The stories shared about them highlighted resiliencies and achievements in working towards their diploma with one recently graduated student in attendance as well. There were also school counselors, previous teachers and administrators and pizza, lots of pizza. Now event number three. I'm before you sharing an update about Walk to Virtual Academyy's school growth plan and activities and next steps. Similar to the early events today, I am in awe of how our students
004and families carry the burdens they face and the persistence they display. So let's begin. We begin with some pictures. This is from a recent um community-based support session that we do two mornings a week. As I've said before, to provide an exceptional and equitable student experience virtually actually takes a lot of personal care and contact. Number two, this is recently at the Mentor Milwaukee symposium which myself and our staff attended. One of our prime interventions is a mentoring intervention. It seemed appropriate to go to the mentoring symposium in a full circle moment at the very first session creating safe spaces for black girls. The facilitator was actually a Wawaossa School District graduate from 15 years ago. Speaking of excellence, recently one of our substitute teachers, Andrew Hancock, received the EDG staff excellence award. Now, Mr.
005Hancock subs for us regularly. In fact, he is part of those support sessions at the library two times a week. He also may be the only retiree from Motosa school district to receive an edgy staff award as well as when he was a staff member a distinguished service award. Congrats to Mr. Hancock. He is truly the academic whisperer for our students. I'm going to go through our three goals much like I did in the fall. um you're going to see some commonalities obviously with the goals but also some of the um the resources and activities we use. Okay. So there's going to be some repeats in terms of we lean into the full-time employees we have our collaboration time um as far as resources go. You're also going to see repeated um those interventions we
006utilize called check and connect as well as a framework we've done with respect to student engagement which is a evolved version of what one would call trauma-informed or trauma sensitive care except it's called healing centered engagement. It focuses on student assets. We've always looked at academic kind of get a dipstick sort of looking at how many what percentage of our English and math courses are completed always aiming for 100% again professional learning our FTEEs our collaboration time activities check and connect our healing center engagement as well as the fact that we do meet monthly with homeschool student services staff at the high schools so the counselors social worker keeping that going to let them know of the students that they've had some contact with in the past and still some school affiliation how they're doing.
007Um we've had our adults when we look at what adult practice looks like. Are we doing interventions the way they're supposed to be done? Fancy term being fidelity. So we do fidelity checks and adult practice checks. That's part of the check and connect intervention. What I'm sharing now is student outcomes in terms of percentage of those courses passed 84% 82%. Okay, shy of the 100%. Midway through the semester, however, both of those were at 55%. As I've mentioned in the past, the fortunes in virtual learning can sometimes change from week to week, if not days to days. And sometimes it takes thatounding with heart just to get the student back on track. and their fortunes from one week could change the next. Disproportionality. What we've looked at is basically any of our students that, you
008know, we're looking at potential dismissal or on probation or getting um I'd say like mailings regarding performance and pacing that's not on, you know, that's on par where they should be, but that's proportional to our enrollment um of our students. helpful in this endeavor has been the fact that we do have a DPI consultant that we've been working with because we're on a larger plan of comprehensive supports and improvements. So, we have learnings through that. We have checkpoints and we also have in addition to the school growth plan a 13-point rubric of basically how we're working to improve that goes handinhand with our school improvement in addition to our activities with healing center and engagement. Um some things we've done again with looking at adult practices is having our teachers basically look at what they
009actually say to students. So, we have them kind of record their sessions with students and analyze a transcript. Um, and we talk about that, talk about the language we use, talk about opportunities we have for um maybe throwing in aspirational language. It's not just get through the course. It's not just get credit. How does this link to other things you things you eventually want to do? Our outcomes everything was proportional. This is much like in the fall. Okay. Culture. This has always been do our families and students believe that our communication with WVA is it's a two-way relationship. um our activities, our checking and connecting, um our reachouts, home visits, our weekly student support team meetings where we're talking about students weekly, um more in depth, that's the home visits. something that's brand new in
010addition to our library check-ins and any other onetoone check-ins we do is we want to juice things up and said well what if we did some meetings at um kind of at our home base in Tosa East itself um so now in addition to our library sessions every few weeks we do something called support squad jazz it up a little bit of phone a little bit of food a little bit of a fellowship but also spending the day just working together to drop So, that's a new move for us. Um, we've had three sessions so far. Um, two or I think we have the third one coming up on Monday. Students have appreciated it and staff have grown to appreciate it. It's a good time. and our family survey data as well as our we
011call our little hounding with hard cards that we drop off when we do home visits or whatnot suggests that that communication is two-way >> time >> as in the fall I'm including some snapshots regarding just who is enrolled with us overall special education as well was discipline compelled. Much of the work is going towards school program as I've mentioned before. Um those are some activities happening this spring as well as testing season, more support squad sessions, um continued professional development with healing center engagement, preparing for graduation and looking for summer programming. and then looking at that transition. Um, WVA as program next year. Time for questions. >> Really a question, just more of a um, great job. Uh, seeing positive positive trends on everything uh frankly and I think we have a a scheduled tour
012uh coming up so can't wait to see 16th we'll be at Champions and Valar Phillips that's correct >> looking forward to uh to being able to see the next few um the only question I would have is more of a general How how is the transition um going as far as getting ready for going to a program next year? On on on par with where you're hoping or >> I I'd definitely say on par. We had um we had a monthly um broad committee meeting. Um >> Governing council. We've done that too. Met with council. In fact, last week Dr. Marvel, Dr. Means were part of that meeting too. Um and there's also ongoing conversations with um division of people and family supports as well as division of academic performance of just looking at alternative
013type services in general. you know, be it online, be it credit recovery, you know, be it the GED option too, and just looking at it and say, does that expand, you know, do we look at current practices and say how we want to make tweaks? Um, and always, you know, how does that align with things we're doing at even the tier one level? at Velar Phillips today. One of the uh one of the older persons from Milwaukee, Charlene Moore, I don't know if anyone knows Charlene. Um as much as it was a celebration, she mentioned, we have to look, we also have to look upstream for youth, like what's happening before. And I think that's always what we have in our our heads when we look at some of these different types of learning options.
014We can be can be proud of them. we can have supports but also like what happened before you know um how are we supporting earlier and so that's that's some of the robust conversation that's happening in um in some of those meetings I've started >> um welcome thank you for presentation um in terms of the transcripts and self-reflections that you're doing with teachers and staff are They are who's who's doing the transcription? Do they listen to it and transcribe themselves? >> Uh you can use >> Microsoft. >> Okay. >> Then like upload it to work. You can take a recording up upload to Word and you'll get like the transcript >> and um is that something you just started? >> Yeah, we started that this year. >> Okay. I'd be interested in in expanding that
015throughout some of our other schools, too. I just think that's a really interesting, helpful way for teachers um to get kind of direct feedback on their instruction. So, um I appreciate the creative thinking of that. >> Thanks. >> I'm old school. When I was in my getting my masters, I had to transcribe a ton of interviews that I always did. So, yeah, >> now it can just be done on Microsoft. Okay. How is it going with um students returning and the flow back and forth? Because I know that's something that as it goes into a program, we've been looking at is it mostly at the semester point or are you seeing a range of um of students coming in and out of WVA? Are we collecting any thoughts from students about how that goes >>
016in terms of their like their onboarding experience? Oh, just in terms of the experience, we had you had talked about the goal of keeping them connected to their um their attendance area school at the same time as participating in WVA. Just curious if there are any updates on that or if there's a way for us to learn more about um how effective that is. Well, the slide I have up currently, which has numbers from the 24th of February, as I've said before, I mean, this was already already out of date on the 25th of February. Sure. >> I mean, I've got >> But I like to see you got a nice balance there. It's not a all >> I think we got some time application this morning. We have a couple introduc transfers like sitting
017like it's it happens, >> you know. >> Um and I think to do that and usually if it's happening midway through a year, um I think we we try to bear down on the list. It used to be boy this this student really might need like some handholding, you know, like like a welcoming that's this and um that just has to be the rule and not the exception. I mean, I I go back to that just that human element like it's it's tough. This is a tough transition if you're going through something and now you're switching modalities that just it can't be emphasized enough, you know, and so you're right. I I think I think as we look at you you get to the point where you're problem solving at a real individual level, you
018absolutely have to have systems. No doubt, you know, systems, protocol, if if anything from working with, you know, our plan with DPI was that, you know, like like putting things in place and really monitoring. Um, but every individual story it story is different, you know. Um, so maybe when I look at some of that survey information, like maybe that that onboarding piece is maybe like pulled is made more explicit. Um, but I also think that because we've loaded some things on the front end, you know, maybe back in the day you would hear like, gosh, you know, my my child now has switched over here and I, you know, when am I going to hear from someone? >> And now it's sort of like, hey, I I heard you were at my door like two
019hours ago or, you know, we always hear from the teachers. So, that's um, >> great. >> That's a nice problem to have. >> Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Okay, we can move on. Thank you. >> Thank you. But you get st Good evening. My name is Nicole Curry. I am one of the associate principles at the Bellar Phillips School. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to share an update with you about our school growth plan. I'll begin with an overview of the school growth plan goals for the 2526 school year. Our work has centered on three priorities. Infusing literacy in content areas, increasing staff confidence and effectiveness in supporting students self-management skills, and providing opportunities for academic and career planning, and also goal setting. Our scorecard reflects progress towards all three of these areas.
020This year, we have continued to focus on literacy across all content areas because our students entered with varied academic uh backgrounds and skill levels. Literacy cannot just live in our English class. It is important that it is integrated in math, in science, social studies and also in our elective courses. Our emphasis has been on strengthening vocabulary development, structured reading strategies, and writing across disciplines to support grade level access. Overall, our students have um improved in their academic performance the longer that they stay with us. For example, students who have been with us for at least a semester, 25% of them have seen an increase in their star test scores. students who have been with us for at least a year have seen a 44% increase. So that is amazing the work that our staff is
021doing. Uh for our disproportionality goal as far as increasing staff confidence, um we are focused on um getting professional learning in ways that we can understand our own self-well being. um identifying ways to self-regulate and understand how um co-regulating is important to building and maintaining relationships in our classrooms with restorative practices. Our staff has received guidance and tips on building, maintaining, and repairing relationships with staff, students, and also the county staff that we interface with every day. they participating in circle activities um that connects their that improves their connections to others. Um explore ways to engage in problem solving and conflict resolution and also reflected on our staff's theme of how do I show up in a secure setting. Students must develop the ability to regulate their emotions, repair harm, and engage productively in their
022learning environments. So, our staff are intentionally building um their capacity to explicitly teach these expectations so that we support our students in staying in the classroom and not miss class because of inappropriate behaviors or broken relationships with their teachers. So the impact that this has had on our um school population and climate is that this time last year there were 244 behavior referrals and this time this year we are at 94. So that is a huge impact on the work that we're doing and how it's affecting our learning environment. Um to our third goal which is uh related to our culture goal of providing academic and career planning through our designs course and also careers. Uh our gym pop classes our students are using design thinking to identify real needs, develop ideas to create solutions
023to improve their communities and explore ways of integrating their personal interests and also um coming up with ideas to meet the needs of their communities. So they've been focusing on developing mobile businesses and coming up with a business plan to see that successfully through. So in partnership with um some community entrepreneurs, they have come in to talk about their experiences with building mobile businesses. So, they've had um visits from Pete's Pops, um girls growing to become women, and also a young lady who has a mobile hair braiding studio in uh one of her mobile vans. So that has been really exciting for our girls to see and and our boys to see different ways that they can use ideas to solve community problems or issues through uh business ventures and also set important goals for
024themselves and for their future. So um this reinforces the connection between the time that they spend at Veil and ways that they can improve their long-term outcomes when they transition out. ahead here, right? Um so all of those um activities directly align our school growth plan goal and we are continuing to strengthen the literacy across content areas, build and restore relationships and deepen student center practices which brings me to the next phase of our work. So now we are moving towards providing personalized learning experiences for our students using student centered practices. So at Veil as I mentioned earlier we serve students with varied academic histories and lengths of stay. Instructional consistency is critical in a secure environment and we only have students for a short period of time. So the time that we do have
025them has to be meaningful, has to be relevant and we must make each day count. So we are strengthening our clarity, rigor, and student ownership across classrooms to ensure every student is provided a meaningful academic experience and that they're making academic progress. We feel that personalized learning is the model that will help us achieve that. So personalized learning will allow us to meet students where they are academically, honor where they've um already been and what they already know, and then help them move through the curriculum without having the pressures or the stigma of traditional grade level pacing. So this model will support frequent entry and exit. So our transient population, restore agency and motivation, reduce student behavioral issues, align to rehabilitation uh goals which include things like growth uh skill building and also successful re-entry.
026strengthen relationships between staff and students through meaningful connections and also offer flexibility, choice, and unique opportunities for differentiation. And so in our setting, what that could look like would be clear learning targets um towards grade level standards, structured opportunities for student ownership. So having that voice and and getting a choice in how they express their learning, transparent progress tracking, and then also consistent feedback loops in the forms of like exit tickets, check-ins, um non-evaluative comments, and then feedback that allows them to provide a revision of their work. So it's more meaningful the um contact that they have, contact that they're having with our staff. Um, this directly aligns to district priorities of teaching to grade level rigor, strengthening collaborative planning, and using feedback to improve student learning outcomes. So, what we're doing is more or
027less a strategic alignment and refinement of our instructional model to better operationalize what this looks like at Velar Phillips School. So personalized learning we believe is the way that we can increase student engagement and improve student learning outcomes at the same time. So to engage in this work, we want to make sure that we're um practicing a disciplined approach. So this school year we are um focused on designing and building staff capacity. So we've already had staff engage in some professional learning to help us define what does personalized learning look like at Velar Phillips School. What are some practices that we can implement that is going to support student centered learning practices? Um we are collaborating with the institute for personalized learning. They're going to provide consultation services to us and also coach administrators and
028our instructional coach and help us to develop a plan and a mapping of what this is going to look like over the next couple of years. In the fall will serve as our structured pilot year. We're looking to pilot this in our MCAP program and also for our long long-term students that are in GenPop and um look for ways that we can increase the personalized learning experience for our girls. And then um in the fall of 27 and 28 school year, that's when we'll have full implementation with some refinement based on our um pilot year, but also making sure that our school uh learning team supports that um monitoring with the metrics that we'll have in place and also providing professional learning experiences for our staff. So what this means for our students, the expected
029outcomes are increased engagement, stronger academic ownership, clearer instructional expectations, greater instructional consistency, and also improve academic performance and growth. And we look forward to diving into this work and sharing updates with the school board. And thank you very much for giving me this time to share this update with you. Are there any questions? Yeah. Yes. Oh, this is exciting. So, this is a new approach for you and your team. >> Yes. Um, are you hoping to take this on in multiple discipline areas or primarily ELA and math or what what are your thoughts about how that's >> Yeah, we are planning on taking this on in all of our content area. We want especially in our uh restorative pathways program currently called MCAP. So, um this isn't going to be in partnership with Milwaukee County.
030this is something that they're looking for also. So, this is like a perfect marriage that's getting ready to happen. So, um we don't know exactly what that's going to look like at Velar Phillips. So, we're working with our staff. We're going to have a personalized learning design team going to um um bring that team together this month so that they can help us define what does that look like here. Are we just going to really focus on student centered learning practices or are we able to provide personalized experiences for all students? And what does that look like? How can we scale that? And what type of professional learning do our staff need to implement that? >> It's a lot. >> It's going to be a big list. >> It is. We're excited about it though.
031>> And you're feeling supported in that. You're working with this institute that you mentioned. >> Yes. Actually, we had a meeting with our coach today and so she's going to be helping us to map out what this looks like, what type of professional learning we need for our staff, and then how do we gather a team of teachers to implement um this pilot that we're looking at doing. And so, we're starting out small, just starting with our restorative pathways team, and they'll be our main pilot. and then looking at specific content in GenPop where we can offer this to our long-term students. So, it's going to be a slow slow steady structured pilot that we're going to roll out. Yeah, we're starting to work right now and we hope to have a um successful pilot
032beginning in the fall of this coming school year. Uh, as a followup to that, um, MCAP program is morphing into the Cersei, correct? >> Yes. >> Um, that hasn't happened yet. I don't think the Cersei is open yet, but how do you intend on managing that transition as well or is it just kind of waiting until the Cersei opens up? >> So, the Cersei is is supposed to be operational by the end of this month. So, that's that was shared today during the news conference. So hopefully that happens. Um so this school year we're just going to continue with our current programming. So right now um therapy is integrated during the school day for 1 hour through DBT. We're going to continue with our current school programming. Um our teachers right now are teaching interdisciplinary
033units. But when they move into the CERSY later this month and um start classes, each teacher will just be focusing on their own content area and they'll do that for the remainder of this school year. This summer, um, we will be working with our design team and our MCAP teachers to pilot to design a pilot to begin in the fall. So, we don't know what that's going to look like yet, but we're we're in the process of working through those things right now. >> Right. So, your greater transition already incorporates that. >> Absolutely. And we'll be working in partnership with the county who are very excited to support us and we are looking excited to implement this. adventure. Thank you. >> Liz had a question. >> Yeah. With all the um different transitions that you
034guys, it sounds like you guys will be going through um you said you were trying to build your staff capacity. >> Yes. >> What has their feedback been? Um or how are you getting their insights on on how to make those transitions? >> Yeah. So, we've had um so we've already had a boot camp training with the Institute for Professional Learning back on February 6th. And uh prior to that um during our morning meetings, we just asked staff questions like, "What do you think personalized learning looks like at Veil? What are some things that you're concerned about? Um what are you what are what type of professional learning opportunities or supports do you think you need?" So getting feedback from them on the um on the front end, asking them what what experiences they may
035have already had with personalized learning or what do they think that is. So getting an idea from them um and testing the temperature of the water to see what the buyin is. And so we so so far we do have some mixed results. People are really concerned about being able to implement personalized learning in Genpo because when they hear personalized they say okay I have eight or 10 kids in my classroom I have to provide a personal experience for all of them and we're trying to move away from that perception what personalized learning looks like at Veil and really focus on student centered practices which means um teachers will support students in goal setting tracking their personal progress. Um, making sure that they know and understand what they're learning and why. So, really focusing on
036clarity and rigor. Um, providing feedback that's meaningful, actionable for them. And so, that those are things that the district is already doing. So, we're just really, uh, being very intentional about realigning our school program to align to what the district is already doing and and refining that to fit in at Bell, you know. You talked about obviously the staff capacity. Um, aside from that, do you anticipate or see any resource gaps going from design to pilot and implementation? Anything that you're anticipating through those kind of three phases over these these next couple of years? >> No. So, we're um we're relying on the resources that we currently have, our uh school learning team, our student services uh team, our administration, and the professional learning that we're receiving. and support that we're receiving from the Institute
037for Professional uh for personalized learning. Um at this time we don't perceive any financial needs or um increase in our budget to implement this because this is not so much as a new program as it is a shift in how we provide learning experiences for our students. So, it's just really focusing on the strategies that we're using, building staff capacity to ensure um that we're using more student centered practices and making the learning more personalized for our students. So, just realigning the work that we're already doing and being very intentional about how we engage students in the learning process. >> I have a question, but it's kind of in a different direction. >> Sure. Um I I'm wondering um if you are able to track what's happening with your students after they leave though um
038like when they go back to their regular school or when they leave um and they're 18 and they're done with school five 10 years down the road. How how is your programming impacting these kids long term? And then I guess also how can we learn from what you're doing and using those things just in you know regular classrooms. I think we can really benefit from the strategies you're using. >> That's a really good question and and there are a lot of barriers as to our ability to follow and track these students because really they're they're only WATSAs students because of the location of the detention facility of the school itself. So once they leave Bellar Phillips and they're released to go back to their schools, we really don't have any other touch points with them.
039We do work closely with MPS there's a social work leaison that we work very closely with and she gives us updates because we are required by title one funding to provide updates the impact of the work that we're doing, how it is affecting them. And so we get updates about students about as far as like 90 days to know, yep, they reenrolled. Yes, they're doing well in school and then after that there are no touch points. So we can't really contact families. We can't provide any other services to them once they leave. Um we can't communicate with them unless they reach out to us and ask for things. But there the relationship between our school and them once they leave is severed. Um, so we can only track some of that through the county if
040they were to reaffend and come back. Um, we can try to look for ways that the county can provide that information to us to see what positive impact we've had on them and finding out that students are graduating. We do get some information like that and they'll send messages back to say, you know, thank you for the work that you guys did with us. We just had a kid who was um at Velar Phillips for like I think four years and when he left us all he needed to do was to take one class and take his GED and he did earn his high school diploma and he sent word through one of the YDO's youth development officers um and let us know how well he was doing. So little things like that we grab
041on to and if we don't see a kid ever again we assume that they're doing well. So that's our gauge. Yeah. >> Thank you for explaining um where you're going and it's all very exciting. Uh we look forward to the next update. Thank you very much. Look forward to sharing that with you. We move on to letter C which is Longfellow Middle School. Earth plan Not worth it. ready. >> Thanks, please. >> Well, good evening. I'm Monique Porter and principal over at Longple, associate principal. >> Um, we just wanted to start out with just an overview of our goals. So goal one, Mbo staff will plan high-quality, culturally responsive instruction by regularly engaging in collaborative planning and data analysis structures to build a culture of rigorous learning and better outcomes for all students. Essentially, what
042that means is staff will plan for high quality instruction um using throughout their PACE teams and collaborate around data. So these are the outputs that we had showed you guys last time. We highlighted the ones that we made adjustments to in orange. Um the output number one, we have the 20-day staff plan, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Um output number two, we did change um our survey. We had a norms of collaboration survey um that was on there and we found that um staff were just kind of feeling like that was just redundant. and we um collaborated with our special ed team and they talked us through um an inclusive practice survey which is more supportive for teachers to be reflective on their how inclusive they're being in their classroom. So we
043switched it to that and we've since had teachers um reflect on that. Um number three, for outcome number three, we have been providing PL around collaborative structures, checks for understanding um and data protocol. And then for output number four, the 20-day staff plan was a part of that output as well. um data protocol building PL, but also we worked with Adam Grizzy to develop a ATIS report that allows for um staff to be able to receive all students in their classrooms like their grades, their star report or their STAR scores for ELA and math um as well as a yes or no if they're already in an intervention. So that's supportive and like staff not having to go find all the data, but it's just kind of in one spot for them. And for goal
044two here again, this one is more about our staff delivery of high quality instruction while engaging those students in collaborative structures and discourse um to make sure that that learning environment is one where all students can grow and achieve. Um some of the shifts that we spoke about uh when we first introduced our uh SGP was the just posting in reference of learning targets and success criteria for students. Uh we are still seeing that to be a bit of a challenge in terms of re-referencing that in our classrooms. Um we have seen a little bit of an uptick in uh specifically our our piloted classrooms as we are really honing in on some um fidel teaching with fidelity across our math and our social studies curriculums. Um but again highlighted an emphasis on reiterating those
045goals throughout our lessons. Our second shift is a little more around making sure that that planning is intentional for discourse. When we are in PACE meetings we are asking that specific question. how are you uh preparing for student discourse? Uh we should see it in their lesson plans. And that's something that uh again we'll be talking about here shortly when we introduce what our 20-day plan for or 20-day plan for staff is. Our third shift was around our SLT. This is actually something that we moved into our green uh category here. Uh most recently our our SLT team has been uh extremely dynamic and and instrumental in moving our building uh specifically contri contributing to our our PL plan. Um we we are really honing in on the collaboration that they've provided making sure that
046they are a part of being the voice that's teaching uh some of the stuff and it's not just coming from their administrators. Uh, so we're going to continue to work and and build upon some of that PL. And again, that's something that we'll we'll speak to shortly in our 20-day plan. Number four, our our shift was developing and following that instructional lesson plan, making sure that that launch work uh is seen throughout our lessons. Again, those are things that we're noticing in our observations, uh things that we're uh discussing in our PACE meetings. Um and again uh seen really clearly now that those pilot um courses are are really emphasizing that fidelity. And then the last one uh is really focused around our attendance. Uh I will give props to our SST team. Uh making
047sure that that is highlighted across the board, right? Making sure that if we're seeing a student on DF list, we're paying attention to that attendance. If we're seeing student um in in just general general challenges across the board, we're making sure that attendance is is a factor that's being considered. >> Okay. So, for our 20-day plan, we took some time to kind of think about like what did the school really need? We know that we were pushing and focusing on data use, collaboration, and then that instructional shift that staff should be making. We found that um some staff were in a space where they were looking at data, some staff were and they'd stopped there. Well, we need to make sure that as adults and as teachers like we're making that instructional shift in order
048to push instruction. So, that's where we decided to lay in for our um 20-day plan. Um the dates were February 9th through um next week, so March 12th. Um the plan that we went with was ensure staff are provided with effective methods for check for understanding, clear guidance on how to respond to data collected and structured opportunities during PACE to collaborate on using data to inform instruction. So just really making sure that staff are using their pace time to collaborate around data and then making that instructional shift. Um and then just making sure that they had the tools to do so. So we found that with checks for understanding some people were just saying I'm doing thumbs up thumbs down like but how are you using that data? How are you gathering that data and
049monitoring the progress? And then what are you doing next? How are you impacting the students who don't quite understand? So for our 20-day plan the action steps were or are that um teachers should be engaging students and checks for understanding and be sure to monitor their progress uh meet with their collaborative or pace teams. We left it open because we do have some teams that meet um across grade levels. As long as they're meeting and talking about data, it counted for their 20-day plan. Um within the team, discuss and document and reflect on student data and plans to adjust instruction using collaborative structures a collaborative structure or a discourse strategy. So, is that pulling out a small group and you're working with a small group to of students who don't quite understand? Um, and then
050they had to fill out a they have to fill out a reflection form to just talk about like that instructional shift that you made. Did it help or did it not? Um, so that was the gist of it. And then we wanted to be able to communicate to staff like how do we know that this is working? Um, so we said we know our 20-day plan is working if teachers are checking for understanding and formatively assessing students and then tracking results from those formative assessments, meeting and pace teams to collaboratively plan for responsive teaching. We did yesterday um we had a um building PL and we did a midway check. Well, it was a little bit past midway, but we did a check on how they were doing with their 20-day plan. We looked at
051the um goo Google form Google form um results. We noticed that some staff did not quite have the trends or they did not have the quite check text checks for understanding like it wasn't clear. So, the PL that we did yesterday was like elevating that for staff to say like these are the things you're putting in. Can you pick out the ones that are good and then which one which ones that are not? And then how do we fix that? How do we make that better? And how do we make sure that we're making that instructional shift in order to support students? >> All right. Some of our next steps, obviously, we're going to complete this 20-day plan, the see it, name it, and do it. Um uh that as of next week, uh we
052are going to use the staff to reflect on that and then build upon it. Um more importantly, probably institute something next. um using that tool as a feedback or a feedback opportunity for us uh specifically as administrators. Continue to roll uh and push discourse and collaboration among students and roll out a consistent data protocol for our PACE teams will be the next uh step in kind of our PL plan. Um another step will be to continue to expand SST work. Again, a big focus on that attendance piece. on the data sheet that you have in front of you, you might notice a line of of what we see is red um where we want, you know, more than 95 or 90% of students above that 95% range. And we're kind of just hovering at some
053of these numbers and our SST team is doing a lot of work to make sure that uh we are engaging and interrupting where we can. um you know kind of highlights some of the students um how many students we've already kind of interrupted or uh provided intervention for across the board whether it's attendance behavior uh DF list etc. Uh we will continue to monitor PACE um and continue to attend PACE and monitor their agendas, continue to reference our Longfellow lens, which we kind of introduced last time, kind of exploring uh what our instruction looks like, adding adding strategies to each component, and then moving into our student survey next steps. We want to make sure that uh we share some of those results and review those with students as well to uh hopefully enhance some
054of those results. >> Okay, thank you. We also have this handout but we got the big staff. So >> any questions? Yes, mister. Uh so you are getting near the end of the 20day uh 20-day mark. What would you say like the morale is? Um is you know it's it's I'm assuming this is something added on extra there's extra steps. uh what kind where I just what are you feeling as far as how staff is is taking to it and do we have a way to measure kind of their sentiment afterwards in some sort of anonymous or again data driven way that that any anyone can feel free to to submit to. >> Yeah. So, initially um full transparency, initially staff were feeling like this is another thing like I have to, you know, do
055this. Some some were on board because we did bring our SLT in before like as far as the Google form and all the pieces of the 20-day plan, but some did feel that way. And so, we did um talk at our staff meeting last week about feeling that way because it should just be something that staff are already doing. They should be talking about data. They should be making instructional shifts and talking about that throughout their PACE team. Once it was put in that perspective and then we also elevated teachers who were doing it and like making it it wasn't meant to be a big thing like a big shift for them. So we elevated some teachers who saw it that way and like showed them examples of how they're doing it and it's been
056better since. Okay, as a quick followup, uh, was it was it normalized throughout for everybody or or were there different tools and and ways to record data depending on who it was? >> So, they had the opportunity to choose, they all had to use the same Google form, but the Google form just says like what data did you use? So, they had the autonomy to choose what data they wanted to use and what trends they're seeing and then what they wanted that instructional shift to be. um it just had to be centered around some sort of collaborative structure or discourse among students. >> Thank you. >> First, I wanted to share that I talked to a a parent who praised your leadership at Longfellow and was almost in tears telling me about her experience um
057at conferences last week and just how positive of um an experience her daughter is having. So, I wanted to make sure to say thank you for building that environment. >> Thank you. >> For our students, um I have a question around how you've built the capacity of the SLT teams. I think that's really interesting and something that we could look at the district level, how we give the ownership of a lot of these topdown directives and really having the SLT teams take ownership of that in our building. So, it sounds like you guys are doing a good job. um and maybe you'll answer tonight, but I'd love to hear how you built the capacity of that team and how we can spread it across our district. >> I think the one thing that we did
058was um we interviewed our SLT members. So, we reached out and we said, you know, if you're interested in SLT, you sign up and let us know and then we actually scheduled interviews and had like questions and a full-blown interview. um and then had a rubric and we all the whole process that we do for interviews we did with SLT and that's how our members were kind of chosen that kind of gave us u members from every pretty much every content area and they've just been a really good team like a really solid team but I think the key was like truly asking intentional questions about what we were looking for for an SLT and then using um the interview process as leverage to do to pick the right members. Yeah, I would just add
059that maybe it's just a uh the collective ad e ad e ad e ad e ad e ad e ad e ad e ad e ad e advocacy, right? I mean this we're highlighting the shared ownership >> um that it wasn't just maybe some of our stuff, >> it was all of our stuff. >> Um and I think they just they bought into it. >> I think that's like one of the most important pieces when implementing something new. So sounds like you guys have figured it out. >> Yeah, we just bring them in for like all big decisions. We deliver it to the staff, but it's important to get their input because they are talking with the teachers and they have that um perspective. So, we pull that into our SLT meetings and we talk
060about that and incorporate what their thoughts are as well as ours and just kind of have an end product. >> And how often do you meet with your SLT? >> Every month. >> And sometimes more frequently if we have like something that we're going to roll out, we just want to make sure it's like really intentional. So, sometimes twice a month. But thank you. Um you have some real it's enlarged these numbers on my No, that's okay. Real exciting data here like like you're u have information about you're decreasing the percentage of students with D's or Fs. Um you acknowledge that there's still work to do in attendance. Um, how if you break down this this data by different subgroups, are there trends that you're seeing that might highlight or show some different um disproportionality
061in the data? I mean it's we are saying that our black and brown students are um growing at a lower rate and we also in looking at the data for our star scores we did see that um students with disabilities although they most of them grew like based on their disability but students with OI um did decrease in both reading and math and that's something that we're looking into because usually students with OI um it's either medical or ADD and like we just need to figure out like why that is. So those pieces are pieces that um I would pull out. >> Has your leadership team had an opportunity to to talk about that the data in that in that way and think about how they might address some of that disproportionality specifically. We've talked
062about it, but we would like to bring in like our special ed team and then just develop a team of staff who like we could potentially leverage and like talk like we don't have the answer. So, we just need to further look deeper and try to figure out how we can support all students. We do know that like in looking at the data, we have to um and that's part of our 20-day plan like the st like the students that are not doing well in their classes, what are they doing? So, those should be the students that they're making that instructional shift with um and hopefully that supports overall. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> I noticed that um you also have some of the math pilot happening. So, these strategies um I don't want
063to steal your question. >> The these strategies um that you're using with the 20-day plan, do you see indications that this is a good way to support um pilots and the success of of rolling out new curriculum? Any thoughts on that? >> I think I think no matter what it the the pilots are supporting good practice. >> Okay. So it goes maybe both ways. >> Yeah, I would say it was it's kind of a combination >> because you're normalizing more reflection and I just was thinking it I'm not sure how we measure that but it feels like somehow it would help and support those pilots the process of it because you're doing the reflection and the data tracking very very consistently. >> Yeah. If anything I would say the 20-day plan highlights a little bit
064of the accountability of these are the our noticings. Let's make sure that we are honing in and staying on that that highway as opposed to a little offramp here, a little offramp here. Let's all get kind of back on the same path. >> All right, thank you so much. Thanks for being here. >> Thank you. >> We look forward to the next report and all the big changes you manage. >> Yeah, thank you. We move to letter D, review of Lincoln Elementary School growth plan. slideshow. >> Don't think I'm touch. >> Oh, here it is. >> Thanks. >> Good evening, everybody. Thank you. I'm Jeff Peterson, the principal at Lincoln Elementary School. Um, if you remember when we first met, I had been with students like 30ome days. We're past the 100 day mark and
065it's feeling good. Still new, still in inheritance um, SGP, but um, happy to be in maybe a little different comfort zone with the information that I'm going to share with you tonight. Am I back controlling or Okay, thank you. So, our first goal is that the Lincoln community will create a strong sense of belonging for all by intentionally developing an inclusive and welcoming school culture. We will foster culturally responsive classrooms and staff environments that ensure all students, staff, and community members feel emotionally safe, physically safe, so they can learn, grow, and excel. I think um the only tweak we made to this goal in the second year of the implementation that is that we added the intentionality to the description of that. The resources we used to um continue to make progress in that goal
066is the philosophy of instruction, the disciplinary framework and the instructional leadership manual. And I'll tell you how that was implemented a little bit more. But we're monitoring that first school with um uh some surveys and um obviously professional learning that comes with continuing to make growth. The first um way we that monitored that goal was that school staff is going to be refocusing and realigning the strategy of reteing expectations of behaviors and then the retaching of pro-social skills during moments of instruction and retaching for instructional staff for additional staff and student calibration. So I think you may remember from the beginning of the year we had PBIS implemented at the school for probably a decade or so and the staff felt as though one of the first things they shared with me in the summer
067that they needed to revisit and recalibrate. What we've been able to do since that opportunity and some of our professional learning is to really focus a little bit more on the pre-teing that has to happen before you implement behavior expectations. because we've shifted the focus a little bit and it's been a a long time since there's been a new uh positive behavior intervention and support team at the school. Uh we recently uh put out a survey to see if our shift in uh purposeful um assemblies or purposeful pre-teing was shifting kind of that behavior lens that teachers were expecting to focus on at the beginning of the year. Um and that survey is is coming due and we had our first kind of review of that information last night. Um if you also remember I
068hadn't been able to um close out infinite campus behavior things at the beginning of the year. So this is really a benchmark data which is that um from September to January 12 majors 55 minors and 191 walkie calls. And what we do with that information now is kind of zero in a little bit more on what the calls are for, who they're for, and is there some just target areas that we can do to improve and reduce those overall. We were lucky enough to have our first equity walkthrough in January. And um I think I'd like to share that we um were proficient um during that walkthrough for the first time and that uh positive affirmation and assetbased language are consistently used during instruction was one thing that was noticed and students are engaged equitably
069across classrooms. And I think if you think back to that original um goal that was stated, those are two things that it's very important to be strong and to make sure that students are feeling empowered and learning in in an environment that's comfortable, safe, and that they're willing to excel in. A growth opportunity for us with our equity walkthrough is to encourage more student um led instructional activities and further develop leadership and ownership in learning, which I think you may have sensed my excitement at the beginning of the year. I think for students at Lincoln, that's the most exciting area for us to grow in that the students have those opportunities to be empowered through their learning, but also demonstrate leadership and communication skills. So, definitely kind of a a good match between what I
070was noticing and then what the uh equity walkthrough showed us as well. Our second goal is that uh we provide rigorous universal instruction paired with intentional planning for targeted support and extensions um ensuring equitable opportunities for all our students. That's a nice segue from the equity information that I just shared with you. Um these are the resources that we use. Spark time um pace obviously most schools are engaged in that. We have a Tuesday and Thursday very focused um literacy and math day for our pace meetings. um monitoring the goal setting. We have quite a few of our teams that are working together on a shared goal between them. So, they're able to provide each other resources um do some peer observations and provide feedback along those lines. A special note on the bottom there
071is that um our math pilot happens to be in fifth grade and um the think pair share terminology and notice and wonder terminology is being used regularly already in a pilot classroom. And this was an epiphany for me and I think part of the learning of a pilot year is for for the leaders to to do some learning as well. I think you're all familiar with the turnand talk strategy um and how we've shifted that similar strategy to think pair share and when you take the think part of the pair share terminology that is an important step that you really have to take time to teach kids to do. All kids can turn and talk, but are they talking about what they should be talking about? Are they talking about how they got to the
072solution in their their math problem that they got to? But focusing on the the think. And I've noticed in our pilot classroom that think time is being added as a a very um noticeable opportunity for them to stop because kids are very easily wanting to share in things. But first, we're going to be going quiet. we're going to think about where we got to where we got to before you start sharing. Um, and then we uh have a a read plus framework that's part of our instructional planning and uh are hoping to model and turn over to more students um some of the activities in their literacy classrooms which again ties back directly to that first goal I shared with you that students are taking ownership of their learning. We obviously have uh collaborative planning.
073The teams at Lincoln um Jerry supported each other in grade levels, but we we've also started to do some um crossgrade level sharing and content area um collaborative planning to just have a greater focus of where your students need to be before the next year in that content area or in that next grade level. So that's been helpful to just start um making those collaborations part of the the pace and planning time. We do have the fifth grade math pilot like I talked about. So the math coach and I are spending most of our observations in the math pilot classroom um and just really getting uh me ready to supervise and um lead professional learning next year in um a new curriculum. So getting to know the aspects of the the fifth grade curriculum is
074an an important learning objective for me this year. Um and then the differentiation is something that I think anytime you provide an inclusive environment that is something that everybody needs to continue to revisit and strategize as they're doing their instructional planning. Um the student outcomes we're finding are being quite successful based on the collaboration that we're implementing with our pastime and our adult learning practices. So I not going to read through all of these. You have them available to you, but I think what's important to take special note of is um scrolling all the way down to the star math. Um Lincoln a couple years ago um monitored that there the the the female math students were not performing actually was a pretty big gap performing much below the male counterpart students and so there
075has been some targeted instruction um and not so much in um teaching female students more it's um giving them opportunities to have confidence and um maybe be more active in their learning. So those intentional efforts have led to an increase from a fall work of 67% of our students above the 57 50th percentile of females to 83.2. So that's obviously making a difference. a little bit of a there's still work there though because uh we were doing a little bit of a a competition at the end of math class the other day and the teams sent their male students to participate first and it's like dang it. So still more work to do but we're we're going to get them we're going to get them different math leaders as well. Um this data is here
076student attendance 97% 97% 97% we're trying real hard. I I just before I came today sent some targeted emails for invitations of having parents come in with me and talk about attendance, hoping to move that needle a little bit. Um I think what's been most interesting to me as I am visiting classrooms and doing evaluations and walkthroughs and things is that you can walk in five different classrooms and see five different teachers connecting with students in five different ways. And every teacher has their own strengths and talents. And actually what drove me to the profession was the creativity and the artistry of being a teacher in my classroom that while it's very important to have systems and um equal opportunities in all classrooms that can be done differently based on the different personalities of our
077teachers. Some exciting next steps uh are that um we really are already thinking about what our next um SGP will be and thinking about that co-planning and co-eing. Co-planning happens on a regular basis. Our special education educators are working during the paceimes with the grade levels that they work with and um very connected to the planning that's happening. We don't have so many co-eing opportunities yet and we hope to grow the co-eing opportunities in our next cycle. Obviously, we're continuing with that fifth grade um pilot classroom. A little bit of a notice that we've um wondered is that people are so excited. It's a shame we can't have pilots in every grade level and they want to start digging into that math stuff. The math PL has been great, but it actually is kind of
078a little bit of a a tease of like we get to do it now. Wait another month. Wait another month. So, um it's it's fun fun frustration, I guess. Um and most recently, um we've just joined a a Milwaukee Rep theater partnership for all our second and third grade classrooms. There will be 70 literacy work workshop sessions with um professional teaching artists helping deliver um literacy curriculum and social emotional learning. Um this is called an impact cycle. And I think my situation's maybe a little different being a new principal. I thought it was important to share some information with you in terms of how my leadership is making an impact on a building um that has high success. So I just provided some little input there from a survey I did shortly before the new
079year. Um if Jeff supports collaboration among the colleagues, 29 of the 32 responses said that I'm proficient or advanced in that. I would rate our school climate as u positive, healthy, and supportive. 32 out of 32 were professional advanced. Jeff provides adequate or appropriate support in classroom and school discipline. 31 and 32 responses again profession advance. And then most the one of the last data points is I feel very supported by my principal. Um 31 32 said that as well. Um I got the red stop sign. So I'll let you you have some questions perhaps. questions. >> I just wanted to thank you for including uh the how you're integrating math in the new curriculum into um into next year and already planning on that transition. So, thank you. >> Yes, Mr. Uh, I was
080just curious, uh, in in the pilot program for math, uh, are there there are students with IEPs and special needs and how have you noticed any like how are they taking to the differences? You know what? That that's a great question and I'm glad you asked that because I forgot to mention that we have an unofficial um fifth grade special ed pilot in the math um curriculum as well because the uh fifth grade special ed teacher is working extremely closely with our fifth grade pilot teacher. And what we've noticed is those students are able to um be able to participate at a different level than they've been able to because of opportunities like think pair share. Everybody's got something that they're thinking about or that they can share. So those students are able to be
081um included in more of the opportunities during the class time. A lot of the time the class is just spent on focusing on what you're wondering and noticing and how you accomplish something. and all of our students can participate in that. >> Great. Thank you. >> Mr. Pinski, >> you pointed out a way that you noticed that there was a difference in the learning historically between boys and girls in math and you've taken time to do some work around that. What other what other um opportunities have you maybe found as you delve bond and tear your data to notice some students who are who are not performing at quite the same level as their peers. >> Um thank you for bringing that up. The first part of the presentation included that opportunity for differentiated instruction
082but also intentional planning for students at both end of the spectrum actually. And I think what we've just been um noticing this year a little bit is that that teachers are planning for students that can take things to the next step or that they can do things maybe in a different way but still show us that they're meeting the standards. But we're just not very calculated with that yet. So, as we gather some of these opportunities that we've been noticing or that teachers are telling us they're doing to provide a wider uh opportunity or diversity of experience for experiences of kids in their classroom, now we got to share that with each other and we got to provide some resources for one, but also provide opportunities for them to make it a little more permanent
083part of their instructional planning. >> That answer? >> Yeah, partly. And are you finding opportunities to dig into the data to find subgroups? Like are there like students of color performing differently or uh students with with learning disabilities performing differently than other groups and are you taking measures to target those groups specifically? >> Yep. the special education question I can answer with that co-eing and co-planning and knowing that we have to move into the co-eing more so those students can be uh receiving a greater inclusive um whole class environment I guess is the best way to say it and then the um kind of leadership and communication opportunities for students that are already um having appropriate achievement gains they need something different and they need something that can help them grow even more so we're
084we're watching very closely to those subgroups. Um the behavior data I think is also going to show us some of those trends now that we have a baseline that we're going to probably have to refocus on how we implement some of our expectations and um assign consequences and things in that manner. >> Thank you. Thank you. We we move now to letter E. Review of Washington Elementary School group. Everybody welcome. Well, thank you for having me tonight. My name is Joe Russell. I'm the principal at Washington Elementary School. Um, I plan to share tonight uh our goals uh our context on how we arrived at our school goals. Um how our teachers and staff are doing day-to-day and uh what they're do doing every as well as identifying how we've identified student outcomes and where
085we're headed next. Um, I also just want to share that uh our staff shows up wholeheartedly at Washington every single day for our students and everything you're going to hear tonight is really a reflection of um their work and their dedication. >> It doesn't look like looking at my Zoom that your presentation is being shared. Just >> Okay. All right. >> Can you see it? I mean, this is by far the best part. There's pictures of kids. Um, as I shared uh in the fall, our school leadership team is really a an anchor to our success at Washington. Uh, these folks uh along with other people have contributed uh regularly to digging into data, sharpening our instructional practices, and determining how to best support teachers across the building to change adult practices um for our
086students. Uh, as we broke apart and started this two-year journey, um, our goal num number one is really about academics and proportionality. When we reviewed previous data, two things jumped out to us right away. That too many kids weren't meeting grade level expectations in reading and math. And the gaps between our black and white students and between students who are economically disadvantaged and those who are aren't um were significant um, and not something that we were willing to accept. When we dug into the root cause, uh the themes and our focus became central to the work that we're engaged into now. And one as people, we need to build capacity in our educators around tier one instruction, culturally responsive uh teaching, and this year specifically around the read plus framework. Process was the other area
087identified. We needed our collaborative planning structures uh specifically PACE to be more consistent and intentional across our entire building kindergarten through fifth grade. And so our goal there is um as it still remains. So what does that look like? Uh that looks like collaborative planning. Um every week our teachers are engaged uh in PA structures as all of our elementary schools and teams are. Uh we've really zeroed in on the read plus framework this year and our professional learning and our conversations vertically. Kindergarten through fifth grade have been focused within reading. Uh and then our teachers are are checking in on student progress more regularly uh on a consistent basis vertically again um this year than we have previously. Um I want to just give a shout out here to our coaches. As we think
088about the work that happens in our buildings with in classrooms, our coaches have played an instrumental role in not only supporting supporting collaborative structures, modeling lessons, but also helping teachers make sense of data and next steps for students. Um, how do we monitor? We're monitoring this year by uh making sure that teams have pace agendas, some accountability around our student learning objectives. This year we took our program goal for literacy, made that really a focus for elementary, our our school, and then every team's student learning objective was based off of that RF. Um, and then we started this year a 60-day plan. Um, where every 60 days our teams are coming together vertically and we've just honestly, it's not magic. it's just getting out of the way and allowing teachers to collaborate, share, and celebrate
089the successes that they've had within their classrooms and grade level teams. Um, and so we've had obviously two rotations of those and look forward to the end of the year kind of wrapping up and figuring out where our cohorts of students are so that we can plan proactively. Um, moving forward, um, we've had some outcomes that, um, I think are important to share as as our other elementary schools are. um one of which are students at risk that we've identified. Um 13% of our our students are below that 25th percentile. We've had some increase in 68% of our students are over the 50th percentile on our our oral reading fluency assessment and 37% of our students are uh over the 75th percentile. Um and then in math uh we have two pilot teams, kindergarten and
090first grade. So, it's been a blast to visit their spaces as they've um tried to learn new routines mid year. Um it's been an adventure. Um but our teams and our kids are actually responding really really well. And to echo what Jeff has said about the program, it really allows students to kind of have an entry point on where they're at and allowing also students to um talk a lot more about what they observe in math, which I think is going to yield some unbelievable results in the future. Moving on to goal two. Um we also identified some gaps within uh our students of color. Black students were um five times more likely to receive office referrals than white students. We had um students with IEPs nearly twice as likely to be referred and our
091economically disadvantaged students um kind of their risk ratio was much higher than other students. And so we really leaned into mindset this year and last year around the restorative mindset um shifting from a punitive lens while um kind of building towards a restorative one. And I say that uh that this work is probably the most challenging work that we've we've faced. I think uh here is where you see mindset and the values and the actions of people kind of displaying themselves every single day. And so this has really been um a lot of the work that we have focused on this year. What does that look like? We've really tried to zero it down to some actual things that all staff are engaged in. Uh pre-teaching and reteing expected behaviors is something that uh I
092think we see more of within Washington. We're using and leading hard on our second step curriculum. We have regulation stations in all of our spaces in our buildings. uh classroom meetings that are consistent across kindergarten through fifth grade in a schoolwide format as well as um student driven driven classroom agreements and classroom matrices visible in all of our spaces as well. And again, you can see some of our outputs outputs and the way in which we're monitoring those things throughout the year. just visiting classrooms, making sure that they're visible and um providing um feedback when they're not. I think the other thing I didn't mention, but is something that we use and will continue to use is just our perception data as we um move forward and evaluate that. Um as of February 1st, I
093think it's important to share this and kind of like provide some context. Um, I think our goal really was to reduce our ODRs by 5%. If you look at those numbers, that's not I'm not a math person, but that is not 5%. And so I think it's important to kind of share some context around that. Um, I think we have a more honest reporting culture at Washington this year than maybe we have in the past in looking at students with disabilities um, across the board, trying to be more consistent about how we are tracking and capturing data. Um, I think we have a more honest culture. I think we as we've built restorative systems, I think we've also become more consistent um, in understanding where our students are at and what their next steps might
094be. I think it's the second point though as we have reflected as a school learning team and our ability to make sense of these numbers is the we've recognized that 70% of the ODRs that we have captured this year or that students have that we've reported uh come from a very small cohort of students uh and the repeated behaviors and so it's not as if we are seeing this rampid across the entire school building. We have a a population of students that um are needing to uh be rettaught and repeated behaviors every single day. And I think as kids enter our building every day needing something different um and the significant reteing of these expected behaviors in a school setting, including but not limited to spec specifically designed instruction, access to different learning environments, and
095most importantly, time. Um this can be really difficult. I think when we think about uh th those numbers, they're all students and they're all uh engaged in really critical work every single day to have access to to education. And so um on a bright note, I think we as I started our teachers wholeheartedly show up um and they they're engaged in the work although it's really it's really challenging at times. And so um I'll just kind of wrap by saying it's it's uh again the what we have noticed is it's a small cohort of students that just continue to um we have to think differently and we have to be creative and we have to to attack different needs differently. Um and also we have a large population of students who after retaching they they
096are understanding what the expectations are and and and and doing those things. So, uh, on a bright note, our attendance is is looking really, really well. Everyone shows up every single day at Washington. Um, our next steps really are pace refinement. Our team is realizing that although we are tracking and are more accountable around pace, we need to do a better job of digging into what are the habits of collaborative structures that are making um a a change in in student uh outcomes. our ELA walkthroughs, our 60-day continuous improvement cycles is something that we're going to really grow next year. Um, and then our last goal here is to really lean into students, staff, and family perception data. >> Thank you. I saw the steps comments. >> Yes. Can you tell me more about uh
097the student driven classroom agreements? >> Yeah, so in the beginning of the year and then usually after every uh significant break uh when kids are gone and re-entering school, we just it's it's not like here's the rules poster in the classroom, but it's really a conversation around these are the routines and expectations that we're going to kind of live within this learning community. And then it's kind of like a pact that the students and uh the teacher have. and it's really to outline the routines and procedures and um expectations within the classroom. So, we try to have like a consistent visual for all of our spaces while the matrices might actually be a little bit different in all the spaces. >> Thank you. >> Um you mentioned in multiple parts of this presentation uh interest
098and how that it is a transition, right? transition to a mindset of restorative practices. There's the transition of the math curriculum. There's multiple different transitions. Um, choose your favorite transition and explain to me how you're managing it in terms of working with the teachers and bringing them along. >> Uh, that's a good question. I I would think right now um and probably because it's it's uh a couple years in I think the read plus framework and how we have um adopted our ELA curriculum has been something that we can continue to understand the successes around some of that. So I I just think we're just Washington having consistency and clarity around program goals, building goals, team level goals, um and a clear framework of how to really enhance practice in classrooms probably would be the
099the one I would lean on most. But it's it is exciting to see the math pilot classrooms. Um, and it is exciting to see how mindset um in our building has has grown while it can still be challenging. >> So, I have one um so I love that you're working on restorative practices and you have um a goal of um how teachers will change uh their work and their behaviors too. How are you capturing that? How are you getting reflection from the teacher side? Cuz the list of what educators will do? Um it seems like a lot of it is teaching the students. So what's happening in terms of teaching themselves? >> Um that's a good question as well. We've done some professional learning this year on restorative practices, affirm affirmations and gotten some feedback
100from teachers as well. Um, it is something that I think our our work still needs to be defined around how to really measure kind of those next steps >> as the adult practice changes. I'm just thinking about ways you can put some >> Yeah, I mean >> reflective work into that to help them. >> Correct. I mean, I think we can see it through like practice with classroom meetings and things like that being tightened up and framed the same way across our building. Um, but as far as gaining more insight from teachers, it's probably something that we can do more of. >> Do you have the resources that you need to expand the restorative practices or is that something that you're looking further into? >> I think it's something we need to continue to evaluate
101as a school team. I think there's a lot of work that needs to be built around that, not just in our building, but maybe across our system around how to support building teams. I think it's also something that um we it it's going to take a lot of time and space for. I think too that's one thing we've recognized this year. It has consumed a lot of our time and PL focus um while at the same time really being critically focused on the read plus framework and kind of launching that. So >> a lot of pieces all at once. It is a lot of pieces, >> but in a system they're intersecting each other. And it's just really interesting the possibilities between the leadership and different schools to share and reflect and learn from what
102they're trying and >> um the impact that it's having. >> Yeah, >> you stole both my questions, so I'll take that. But in addition to the on that restorative focus and the mindset and and my mind goes to uh qualifying mindsets that your staff and the educators that we have, do you find any gaps there of uh an unwillingness or any resistance to buy into that mindset that you're hoping to to roll into? >> Um yes, I think there is resistance. I I think um I and I don't think it's necessarily intentional. I'm going to fight this. I you know I I sometimes it just comes out in in actions. You know I I think there are times also where it's easy to look at a situation from a distance and judge it or say
103that shouldn't have happened or how dare Joe did that and where's a punishment or a consequence. And the reality is if you look at behind the scenes the work and the evidence and the team that's creating and supporting the student that knows them the best, their decision really ultimately should be the decision that we we judge and and not the student or the behavior or the consequence or the lack of consequence. Um so yeah, the resistance sometimes comes out in different ways. >> Then kind of just kind of piggybacking off of that as you're as Dr. really point about the tracking of those adult behaviors and the data around that. Do we facilitate or solicitate feedback in regards to that situation or whatever they are from those ODRs from those cohorts or those students individually
104trying to see the the entire picture from the other side on kind of where those kind of converge and kind of figure out ah we have an aha moment on both sides and try to blend those together to come out with a better outcome. I think it's a little harder to get to some of those that data, but I think it is something that when a lot of what we're doing right now is is trying to anticipate like what are the metrics we need to be really like what are the high leverage metrics and we've identified some that we think are really really high leverage and some that aren't. And so your your question points out like one of the ways in which we're not um consistently we're you know evaluating our um restorative approaches
105is we're not able to track everything in infinite campus yet when we say here are the different things that we're going to we're going to actually be doing to restore a conversation. And so we have to find a way to kind of build that. my question. >> I don't think so. >> It sounds like you're utilizing coaches very well. >> Yeah. >> Um I'm wondering how are you identifying areas where they're needed or teachers who are needing some extra help um teaching certain things or are teachers coming to you and asking for some support in certain areas? >> I would say all of the above. Not all at the same time, but all of the above. And I think too our our system has identified ways to support certain grade level cohorts across our our
106our organization in order to be able to kind of measure value and impact. Um but yeah, we have new cohorts of teams. We have different um different challenges that may emerge across uh a a school and a grade level. But I think all of the above. There's times where I recognize something where I'm like either I'm not understanding something or I'm curious about this. And so we we just kind of, you know, lean in with an inquiry mindset and and kind of then approach a team or a conversation. Um, and then there's sometimes where I I already saw a stop sign. And I and there's also the individual teacher or team that's like, I really want to dig into this. I want to know how to do something different. And would reach out to our
107coaches to kind of look for for consult and coaching around Any present? Thank you so much. We look forward to your next subject. All right. Good evening everyone. I'm Steve Curtain, the principal from Jefferson Elementary School, and I want to thank members of the board and Dr. Means for giving me this opportunity to share the progress that we've had at Jefferson so far this year. Tonight's presentation is both a celebration of our growth and an an acknowledgment that our work still continues and we will never be there because our children are always ever changing. But knowing that the team and the and the staff that I work with is guiding u the direction we go in in so many ways around what the children need. As we ground oursel this year, we've grounded oursel in
108the in the overall district vision and theory of action. And that theory of action, if adult practices improve, then student outcomes improve, is one theme I hope to carry through tonight's presentation. Throughout this year, our adult practices have been the um some of the most impactful that I've seen in my career so far. And I and I attribute so much of that to um our SLT. Our school leaders uh learning team has really done a phenomenal job of of reinvisioning how to support and how to guide um staff as we go through the year. And tonight I'm grounding my comments in four major reflections that we have um supported the staff through this year. uh reflections around the culturally responsive learning environments, reflections around pace, reflections around the impact that each of the educators have
109had and then my reflection of the um implementation of our educational um educator effectiveness. We have two goals uh that I want to highlight this evening. We have our first goal being that of our academic and disproportionality. Uh Jefferson educators will improve student performance and eliminate disproportionality through purposeful planning within the pace. And I'm going to stop right there because that really is the focus of so much of what I've been um um trying to guide us through in the in the last three years at Jefferson. It is the development and the continued evolution of our PACE planning, our PACE team that helps our children, helps our teachers meet the needs of our children and helps our children to um continue to grow and and achieve goals that they might not have even um realized
110that they that they could do. And how we get there is through our theory of action. We get there because pace practices are ever are always evolving. Pace planning and pace learning pace periods of time are not about lesson planning. It's a collaborative impact. It's a collaborative time to develop deeply impactful work that will change the the learning experience for each of our children. as our staff has spent time uh reflecting on their pace journey this year. Some of the reflections that they've shared uh through their reflections include that um major celebrations are that we have continue to develop a stronger focus on datadriven decision- making and as a staff the staff has has indicated that we've been able to also increase our intentionality in instructional design. Through their reflections, we continue to identify that
111um the refining of tier one practices while implementing benchmark going into our third year of benchmark next year. Obviously, this being our second year and preparing for the new math curriculum adoption are areas for us to continue focusing. I want to stop there and talk a little bit more because coming into the beginning of this year, um I'm thinking about benchmark right now. into the beginning of this year, our staff felt better because they've had a year under their belt. As we got to this point right now, they're feeling very confident. They know where the system, they know the system, they know the routines, they know um what to expect, and that now allows the capacity, as um some of my colleagues have talked about, for people to become very curious and excited about the
112new coming um math curriculum. So now that we've the way we've rolled it out as a district, we have created the right pathway so that staff have been able to productively struggle through the first two years of a new curriculum which now allow them to continue to focus on refining next year but take on that new challenge of the new math curriculum. Um very much like uh was said uh earlier, we do have teachers that are not um in the pilot um math cycle. very envious of those that are and and looking forward to adding that. So earlier at the beginning I said that one of the other areas that we focused on was the area of impact. What is the impact that we have had on student learning? Some of what you can see
113just through some of our our our more standardized results. You take a look at math uh ma our our star results in math. You can see from fall to winter that we have been moving the bubble from those students who are below um expectation into the blue and the green. And that bubble moving is going to continue to move as I take a look at and I reflect on what I've seen with our fifth grade math pilot, our fifth grade team and and looking at that math pilot and hearing their excitement when we come together as a staff and we start to talk about what to expect in math. they are jumping out of their seat to share with their colleagues what they are doing with the math pilot, what the kids are doing, how
114the kids are responding to the um the new curriculum. And when you go into that classroom, and I definitely invite each and every one of you to come to Jefferson and come to our fifth grade classrooms, when you come into those classrooms, you see children wanting to talk with each other about their learning and taking risks. And that's the hardest thing for some children because we have children that sometimes um struggle to to to put themsel out there to be and and find out that they're wrong. Um math is about making mistakes. Life is about making mistakes. Um likewise, when you take a look at our reading results, you take a look at our LER um RFS uh results, you see that we have um right now 64% of our students that are at the
11550th percentile and above. We know that um our goal is every single student 100% to be at the 50th or or above. Um Brenda Jones has has has shared with us very very candidly how being at the 50th percentile is what gives the child the ability to um have access to comprehension. It's at the 75th where they really can optimize and they're and they're ready to um take on deeper level uh learning and thinking. Um other highlights that I want to make sure that I've I've drawn out are is our tier three exit rate. You can see that we've had 25% of our students exiting out of tier three intervention to go into tier 2 and tier and tier one um directly in the classroom. And I can tell you that these are students as
116we as our system as a whole in the in the district and what we do in the building specifically. I know that these are children that are ready to go in there. We're not just moving children out to achieve a number. We're moving children because their their their skill sets have been elevated to the point where they are now ready for that advance. I'm going to bring us now into our second goal. Our second goal is that of um our culture goal. Jefferson educators will create an inclusive and welcoming school environment through the creation of culturally responsive classrooms. Um with our second goal, our our our third major reflection was that through the lens of culturally responsive learning environments. About two maybe three years ago, we were introduced in this district to uh the culturally
117responsive learning environment checklist. And so throughout the course of the year, starting from the very first days of school, staff members have reflected on the uh using the CRLE uh checklist, they've reflected on classroom arrangements, expectations and procedure systems that they have in place as well as the acknowledgement systems that they have in place for our students. When you take a look at our focus as a staff, the number one focus for moving our needle forward is that of relationship development. And that is something you see each and every day. You see it in the academic lens. You see it as well as um when there when there's problem solving that needs to take place between um students to students as well as teachers with students. Um central to our continued success is the focus.
118Knowing that I had the two minute sign, I want to get to this slide right here. Um central to our focus is the fact that um our PBIS and MLSS teams um meet on a regular basis and they meet with the purpose of talking about how to provide for children. PBIS focusing on that tier one and looking for um trends that that impact the whole school so that we can um have a meaningful staff meeting or um student assemblies on a monthly basis to help children continue to learn those skills. MLSS looking for students who might need an extra layer of support. all behavior is is communication. And so that's why even though um referral rates um right now are are good, I look at the fact that um I I as Mr. Russell said,
119having more referrals helps us to identify the children who are in need of those supports so that we're getting them those supports. So even though we we want the numbers to always be on the downward trend, the numbers don't always tell the story unless we are getting the right information. Um having had the stop sign, I'm going to end with just showing you that um student survey data is also another area that we have reflected on and it's showing that our students are feeling in in in one of the biggest um areas of pride for me right now. students are telling us that they can feel they feel like they can be themselves when we have seen a downward trend in the past on that. So at this point I'll I'll pause here and give
120time to answer questions. >> Yeah. >> I have a couple things to say. Um, I was at um, Jefferson today reading to some kindergarteners for um, Read Across America Week. And I think it's so important for us to get into the buildings and see kids and see teachers working together because you can really get lost in this data and it it's sometimes you I mean you don't forget that it's attached to real people but um it helps to really see that in action and what what teachers are doing to engage students and just like the the questions and the the things that they notice when you're working with them is it's fun to see. But um the other thing that um I like to hear is how how the ELA curriculum is setting the teachers
121up for excitement and hopefully success with implementing it next year. Um, and I'm I'm wondering how how you are seeing and how the teachers are seeing the level of rigor that that curriculum is providing, the math curriculum, and then um what opportunities it's giving to students for extended learning and and kind of deeper deeper learning. >> Well, first of all, thank you for coming over and and and being one of those uh to to support our kindergarten classroom. I'm glad it was a highlight for you. Uh definitely a a great experience and an amazing teacher. Um so thinking in terms I u about the rigor of of the math pilot I think is is was the central focus there. um when you walk into the class into the math pilot classroom, you see a level
122of excitement that um that that hasn't always been there because of the routine of the traditional math uh lesson of of of the past. So you think about the the the typical routine of, you know, start with a warm-up problem, move into the lesson, and right now you come in and you see children productively struggling with warm-up activities that is not just a problem from yesterday that lead directly into the lesson of the day. And then you see the teachers coming in and um and highlighting discourse that was taking place between students. So I take you know to come back to your central question of rigor and um extension there that combined with um strategies teachers are using for for pairing students up allows our children allows our teachers to differentiate for our children in
123creative and um um subtle ways that have high impact. Um you you touched on it in that last statement. Uh that was we we've heard about new math pilots so far. Sounds like everyone's excited and and they're going successful. And the my next logical question was like h how is how is the rigor of them? And um it the way you described it um is is exactly how I would hope that that would turn out. Um backup question uh in and seeing how everything is centered around PACE and that um you're in your second half through your second year and uh and as you're implementing and wrapping that program. I'm just curious now that it's was I established uh when staff need to are are either rotated in or rotated out. Uh how how are
124you knowledge doing the knowledge transfer to new staff? Um and how like how long does it take for them to kind of get the rhythm of it? And um and are there any barriers that you're seeing? >> Great question. Um so no barriers. The only barrier that um well I'll come back to that in just a second. Um what I would say is that from my experience, pace is never something that we will stamp and say we're done learning about. Um especially in a small school. in a small school and in the scenario you're talking about when there is a a teacher who is new to the team and we're talking about a twoerson team often um you know it it there there's a there's definitely always going to be a curve and how do
125we help bring them um up to speed and some of that takes place during the summer and some of that just takes place um through the course of working with their partner teacher and and myself and the coaches. So, we continue to support them that way. And so, I guess the barrier is that it would always be great to be able to have even more time um before school to help prepare them, but at the same point, it's really not you can only do so much preparation before you get into the into the action of of planning together. So, um honestly, I don't see any any barriers of note. What I do see is that um even though we are a small school, we are an extremely dedicated school. And so the staff that um
126that we have rolls up their sleeves and works um extremely hard to help ensure that new colleagues are successful right from day one so that we are we don't lose any ground on pace planning. >> That's great to hear. It's exciting to see um that these changes in your star data and your reading data from fall to winter doing something right. Um at the beginning of your presentation, you had a slide that's academics and disproportionality. And when I look at the data, it's I'm not I'm not finding breakdown of maybe some groups of concern that you're identifying. >> Sure. >> Um and when I look at this, I appreciate you sharing information that highlights like we see some curves upward, but you al also shared these curves downward. um noticing one is like my school
127treats people with all different backgrounds fairly and there's a a bit of a dip there. I'm wondering what your you and your staff are doing to recognize students from different groups who are not performing the same as others or feeling less included. So central to to that um is is is the dedication of the staff. Um I can tell you that um through our our our our different meeting structures, whether it's our SST uh student support team meetings or whether it's just um hey, I've got a a concern. I've got a problem. You know, I'm worried about a child. teachers are are reaching out to have problem solving meetings with not just me but also our social work, our student services team as well as um as well as our um our special education team
128sometimes. So helping children to feel access um and feel that sense of belonging is is one part of that because um but but your your question has another um aspect of disproportionality. And so we do through our our academic lens we do. So from the my school treats people with different backgrounds um fairly that I'm I'm I'm trying to answer right now through a cultural uh responsive you know a CRL lens >> through the academic lens. the staff continues to identify all of the children that are um that are not achieving the academic goals so that we are we are um we are not just waiting for and hoping for a better result. We're actively planning for that. We do act we do see um our disproportionality very similar to um the other schools that
129have presented tonight as well. Um the difference in in the way I've presented tonight um and reflecting on this is that um I'm also talking through the lens of teachers focusing on each and every child in their classroom and trying to move that needle um for everybody so that we can reduce disproportionate. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Rose, welcome All right. Thank you. Uh, good evening. Uh, I'm Mark Supa, the principal of Roosevelt Elementary School, and I get the privilege of sharing our Roosevelt School Growth Plan update with you. Um, I'd like to acknowledge our dedicated school leadership team, a mix of instructional coaches, teachers from across grade levels, special education staff, and especially the Roosevelt's dedicated staff who drive this work forward every day. Um, our vision remains the same. Every student to
130feel a sense of belonging and achieve grade level proficiency in reading and math by the end of third grade. Our core values, equity, inclusion, respect, and continuous improvement guide our decision- making and instructional priorities every single day. Um, our fall the winter update student outcomes. So we know that growth is not linear and there are various contributing factors that impact each student's success. This slide reflects our commitment to strengthening those universal instruction and ensuring all students have access to highquality learning experiences. Um this winter we screened all students SK through fifth grade using AIM Ames web as required by act 20 and we are pleased to see that the percentage of our students who are considered at risk is below the district metrics. We are still working to get all of our readers above the
13150th percentile on oral reading fluency measures. Um, while our students are growing, the benchmark is also getting higher during each window. So, they need to read more words per minute in order to still reach that 50th percentile. And while we are pleased that most of our students grew in their words per minute, um, some have not grown enough to reach that 50th percentile. The metrics that we are tracking on our scorecard indicate progress towards proficiency in ELA and math. And while we are on the right path, um there's always work to do. So our big lever is utilizing FaceTime to ensure access points for all students. Um our monitoring metric of 100% of staff will utilize PACE tells us that teachers are meeting for collaboration regularly. um and not only with their grade level teammates,
132but with the special education staff, instructional coaches, and academic specialists when available. Again, it's not one thing for everyone to have an agenda. It's also another thing to capture what each team is doing each each week in their PACE meetings. So, here's just a sampling of what grade levels are working on specifically in ELA. on this slide. Um, teams are planning how they will model strategies, create assessments to monitor student progress, and develop access points so that all students can engage with the grade level material. Of particular interest is that our teachers continue to engage in professional learning around fluency and how to understand the oral reading fluency measure better so that we can use it to target instruction more effectively. Many grade levels have set goals to focus on the students between the 25th
133and 50th percentile. These are students who do not qualify for interventions but who still need targeted instruction in order to achieve that proficiency. As a result, our teachers have been progress monitoring individuals more frequently so that they can keep a closer eye on how students are growing and not waiting until the benchmark window to make changes in intensity of instruction. We are pleased that our kids are growing and we need to continue to focus on what is working to help accelerate student growth. This is what our staff members are doing in math. just a sampling. Um, and as it was stated before, those pilot teams, our senior kindergarten team at Roosevelt is piloting Amplify, um, which will be implemented districtwide next fall. And the experience for the team is instrumental in their ability to be
134the teacher leaders for our building next year moving forward. Grade level teams continue to focus on planning for universal instruction through the lens of access. Professional learning has supported ways to plan for access to meaningful discourse, consistent instructional routines, and intentional partnerships for students. Additionally, there have been opportunities for all staff to engage with the structure of the amplified lesson framework during districtwide math PL, as was last Monday. As our staff continues to grow and refine their instructional practices, our students will be better set for success in math moving forward. The goal continues to be for our staff to collect daily evidence of learning which helps guide decision making for the next steps in their instruction. That has looked like planning for whole group reteing, small groupoup supporting and stretching and one-on-one support to meet
135the needs of striving learners. We recognize that a sense of belonging is a contributing factor to academic success. Our second goal at Roosevelt was creating a welcoming inclusive school culture where all students feel safe and supported. We continue to embed restorative practices to ensure that students feel heard and conflicts are resolved restoratively rather than punitively and have been providing ongoing professional learning in these practices for our staff. And we monitor this through student survey data and behavioral data. And to date, um, still 100% of all of our discipline referrals include a restorative practice. As you look at our winter updates for student outcomes for um, our discipline, um, you'll notice that there is an increase in minor and major referrals. And as we looked at this as a team, kind of two major reasons pop
136out at us. Um, one is we're more calibrated as a building this year versus last year in documenting student behaviors. So although those numbers are up, it's a good thing because again, you're seeing where students need support. And the other big noticing was that 46% of our minors and 67% of our majors um of those referrals are students in the special education program. So that's a big flag for us. So dissecting that data uh even more, we noticed really two areas to continue to explore. The first is our onboarding of new students to Roosevelt. continue to explicitly teach the expectations of Roosevelt um to be an active participated in their learning experience. And the second is looking at additional resources for our tier 2 students. We utilize check-in checkout. We do a really nice job
137of looking at that as an SST every other week. And some students who are in social promotional groups, but that's still not meeting some of our student needs. Roosevelt offers many opportunities for students, staff, and families to authentically participate in the life of our school. From classroom expectations that are co-created by students and teachers to purposely plan daily morning meetings to our weekly all school community building rapid rally along with events organized by our active PTA like sweet treat morning, a school dance and next week's spaghetti dinner art walk where each student has at least one art project hanging in the hallways. We work hard to engage every student, staff, and family member. Um, this data should look familiar to you. Our staff and parent survey numbers still remain the same. It was just updated
138for our student survey that they just took in the winter. Um, and as you noticed that we continually provide um opportunities for students that our teachers, they feel that their teachers care about them. And then one question that wasn't on there that coincidentally was just brought up from the last presentation is my school treats all people with different backgrounds fairly. That went from 88.7 in the fall to 94.1 in the winter. So we're heading into the final stretch of our two-year growth plan. And although it's coming to an end, we will continue to work hard and implement it and make the necessary adjustments along the way. Thank you. Questions, comments? >> Um, I want to take this opportunity to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the board of education, Dr. Means, the directors, my colleagues, um,
139fellow educators, and the families of Roosevelt for your unwavering support throughout my tenure. Serving as the principal of Roosevelt for the past 15 years has truly been the pinnacle of my career. I've had the privilege of working with an extraordinary team of educators, support staff, and dedicated parents who've all played a part in creating an expiring and inspiring environment for our students. Together, we have cultivated a community that values learning, creativity, and collaboration. And I am proud of what we have accomplished. I'm excited to see how Roosevelt will continue to grow and thrive. and I will always remain an advocate for our students Roosevelt and Wa Tulsa and I thank you for your support and the opportunity to serve in the Wawa Tulsa School District. >> I was going to ask if you were sure
140that this is really going to be your last presentation, but I you just answered that. is very bittersweet, but I just uh appreciate what you're doing for kids on a daily basis. It means a big deal. >> You set a high standard for whoever's next in terms of leading Roosevelt. Questions, comments, curiosity. Yeah, >> okay. One time I called the school office about my kids cello being left like at school and this was years ago and you went in on like on a Saturday morning to get my kids cello so that she could practice over the weekend. That's the and that and I was new in the district at that time and it was like wow that really shows the person who's leading the schools. Thanks. it's stuck with me. Um I appreciate that you
141pointed out um a challenge that that is a flag for you. Um referrals students with disabilities. Hi. Um what might be your next steps there? and and also where else might you see disproportionality in uh academic data at residents? >> Yeah, thanks for that question. So, when we look at and again when you look at those numbers, >> you're like, "Wow, that's a really big percentage of your minors and majors." And when we you break that data down even more, >> it's a handful of students, >> of course. >> Um so, how are we meeting those student needs? Um and the team has been working really diligently on making sure that we're meeting students where they are at and that we're providing the access for not only academics but those reteing opportunities for when it
142comes to behavior expectations as well. Right? So you're looking at the their individual plans and then making adjustments along the way as a team. and any other academic any like thinking about academic data, anything that you're noticing? >> Yeah, specifically when it comes to the the orf >> um when we looked at particular grade levels, um there are some grade levels that we're taking a deeper dive into of wondering what happened between the fall and the winter data. Um and knowing that, you know, I think we talked about this last time when you're they're taking the RF, right? It's it's really how fast and how accurate are students reading and looking at that comprehension. Um, and we noticed a little bit of when some student you have one minute. >> Right. One minute. So, as
143as fast as they're trying to go, some students are really meticulous and they want to get every single word right, which is great in Adrio, but not on this test. Like, we we need to go. So, one minute. So, what does that look like from us as the educators when we're assessing kids and how do we set them up of here's the expectations of this one minute opportunity for you? >> I'll ask a a similar question as I did um to another principal. What what are you doing about that the theory of action with the adult behavior changes? What kinds of are there ways you're incorporating reflection or discussion um around that? So the adult student interactions and you see you know some numbers going up. May you said it might be that we have
144we're better at recording. Um are is there reflection work going on about what role the adults might play in that situation too? Yeah, absolutely. And I I think it comes from a variety of lenses, not only from right your grade level and department teams um with your school leadership team as well um because they're the ones that in collaboration we're moving that work forward um and then when they go back to their grade level teams and then they're bringing some of that information back and then that's opportunities for us when we're talking on our building Wednesdays or we're talking through information on our staff um meetings on Mondays and we talk about those restorative pieces and then also how are students held accountable for some of that stuff and that's you know when we look
145at from a PBIS lens that's during our raptor rallies so if we see an area that we're having some let's just say playground right we're noticing more referrals on the playground that's an opportunity for us to go back and with everybody in front of us let's go through those expectations as a Yeah, it's great that you're capturing that and learning from it like continuous improvement work. >> Thank you. >> Okay, thank you very much. Congratulations on your last report. >> Thank you. And last but not least from the east side review of Watosa East High School. Welcome. Bye guys. Thank you. >> Thank you all. Yeah. >> Good evening everybody. I'm Steve Flank. I proudly get to serve as the principal at East and Chris Liski and Erica Pro, two associate principles. And as we
146did in November, we'll we'll kind of take turns here talking through our various parts of our plan. Uh but uh since November, we've really had the opportunity to sort of ramp up how our professional learning has been sort of delivered in a really purposeful way. And in addition to that, how we sort of target our disproportionality through the way that we systemically review our data and use that as a as a tool in our work. So you'll hear about that as we cover our two goals here tonight. Um, like others, I I really would be remiss to not acknowledge our school leadership team that meets about every other week. They are the driving force. There's members uh that represent every single department in the school. And so they're uh they they cast a very wide
147net. And so our two goals as we wrap up kind of this second year plan, those remain the same. our goal uh around uh instruction that Erica is going to talk about and our goal around culture that Chris is going to review. But that comes back through our sort of root cause analysis still from from two years ago where we really looked in the mirror and recognized that a we we wanted to ensure that we had rigorous instruction throughout um the system at the high school and that we were developing a really collaborative staff culture because we realized that we were doing some things with a relatively traditional lens and so those are are driving sort of reflective practices. So, we're excited by the clarity that this school growth plan sort of brings to the
148building. I think we'd be hardressed to find a single person who can't articulate what those two goals are and the work that we're doing to work uh forward with them. So, that first goal is instruction and Erica's going to take a summary of that for you as well. >> We Okay. Yep. >> Um well, thank you. Um, starting off with our first goal of instruction, our our model was really the warm demander. Um, nurturing and caring for kids, but also having really high expectations of of them as well. Um, so a couple things, activities that we took as school leaders to push that, grow that, and monitor that was, um, each week Chris and I send out a newsletter to staff members, and in that we include data that might be pertinent to conversations, um,
149be it attendance data, we had our, um, PCD violations as that took off this year. um thinking about patterns of referrals, DNF list, tardies, um conference data. With that also comes uh two things. Thinking as we kind of grow the data that we all can own from the beginning of the year to now, we have increased data that we can track and and own. In addition to which thinking of reflective questions that go with that. Last week, Chris added information about our conferences and the students that attended. And we really pushed on people to think about how might you get more families to conferences? how might this look more um appealing for families to be there? How can we continue to communicate with families and just really welcome as you get to high school, welcome
150the continue to welcome families in. Um professional learning. Um there's a list um on the on the sheet in front of you that articulates what our theme might have been for each of those professional learning moments that we came together with the staff. and again growing our focus on discourse, growing our instructional practices. Um, and one of our goals was to introduce protocols that we could model and work with our coaching staff to model and then allow departments to practice their own classrooms or practice with each other in a department meeting or a co-plan meeting as well. So, we really started with um thinking about how do we set the conditions for discourse and growing that practice throughout the year. Um, the one that we finished This last week, yesterday was thinking about how do
151we have intentional discourse strategies that align to how we launch a class, how we what we do in a class, and how we wrap up a class and being thoughtful about we we watched some models and being thoughtful about how we can align our practices to that as well. Um the outputs that we've seen thus far is is twofold really. um our team along with our coaches pushing into classrooms that that we might observe and those that we that we don't and spending a few moments getting a feel for what discourse is going on in there and recording that through our walkthrough tools. Our goal was 75 a month. Um as of last week we were at 327. Um the part that we added to the second semester was how do we link those to
152the part of the lesson just to reinforce the practices that can come at the beginning, middle and end of a lesson and also knowing that um you can practice those strategies throughout. And finally, we've asked educators to also reflect on their discourse to show growth throughout the year. um you can see the ranges between um 2.95 and 3.5 and to see a a onepoint um growth that we that we would demonstrate by the end of the year. So that's a little bit about our instructional goal, how we've been modeling and monitoring. Right. Um, our second school growth plan goal then is focused on culture uh at at East specifically around uh our collaborative culture between our staff. Um, so the goal reads that school emphasizes staff collaboration, professional learning and reflective practice using structured protocols.
153Um, our activities and outputs are kind of combined with this portion of our presentation. Our uh activities um start with our our peer observations. Uh, we've asked our um our staff to uh observe a peer uh at least once a quarter. So four times for the year um and to reflect on that practice. So that's really the key part. It's not just getting in the classroom, it's what are we taking away from that practice um how are we reflecting on it and then um discourse strategies in particular as we focus on that discourse piece um that Erica had previously mentioned. Um as we look at that that outcome uh we saw for the second quarter 39 and a half% of our staff complete that that uh peer observation admitted that that is down from our
154first quarter. Um which I think caused us to or caused us rather excuse me to to reflect a little bit on on a few things. Um, one, are there barriers that exist for staff to to accessing those peer observations? Um, one that that came back frequently was was time, and that's that's a a real challenge certainly. Um, but we tried to look at uh some things that we could do to reduce some of those barriers, specifically making it more well known uh when a staff member might be doing a discourse lesson that that would be um worthwhile to observe. Um, so Erica mentioned the the newsletter that we send out. We did uh we have a standing spreadsheet now where there is um lessons that people submit to say, "Hey, I'm coming in or I
155have a lesson on Tuesday. You might want to come see." Uh, and it's in a spreadsheet for everyone to access. They can kind of plan ahead and be a little bit more proactive with that. We think that's um going to be a really big step for us and and actually credit to one of our staff members who had that idea. So that was a great great way to try to reduce some of our barriers to accessing that that peer observation. It's also come up in our EE conversations, our midyear uh conversations with with staff members around educator effectiveness um is to really push on our staff to to consider how those peer observations could contribute to some of the work they're already doing. Uh in addition to uh the peer observations um Erica mentioned before,
156some of our PACE protocols um really focusing on um specific protocols given uh the the task at hand for a specific PACE team. Um so whether it is at the beginning of the year we talked about setting norms to improve collaboration with uh with teams. Um more specifically lately looking at the the launchwork rap protocol as it relates to setting the the the setting the stage for discussion in the classroom around the discourse to really improve that discourse. Um, a really great example of that, uh, is a, uh, one of our English teachers who I had the opportunity to observe, um, spending a part of a class period prepping for the discussion to really make the discussion richer as opposed to just jumping right into, uh, to to our discourse. Um, beyond that, uh, we've
157also focused again on our continued our practice around staff circles, um, which is really focused on building trust and strengthening collaboration among staff. Um that's really just u creating an opportunity for staff to be vulnerable with one another and and really get to to understand um other people's perspectives and what they're bringing to to the table each day uh in an effort to make those uh collaborative conversations uh much more open and much more more honest with one another. >> So that leads us to our student outcomes and and hopefully you hear in in both of those goals that concept of the theory of action that we've talked about as a district for quite some time about working to change adult practices. that so much of what we're doing is actually focused on the adult
158and what they're doing with students. Um, we're we're really pleased with the outcomes that we're seeing. If you look at that section of the two-page sheet, whether it's the grade distribution, how students are doing in their English and math relative to achievement or attendance, we see those things trending positively, including our student survey. I will add a caveat to our student survey though. if you we we have like 65.7% participation. We do have a wonder on the back end of that and that is who's not filling that out and the kids that may not be filling it out, what are they thinking? And we're we're really kind of digging into finding ways to how to do that differently. And part of our empowering minds grant that we are working through right now is allowing us
159to do some things kind of on the back end to really zero in on that and start asking the question about who's not responding and why. And so perhaps more on that the next time that we're with you. Um but when we think about those next steps, we really do think a great deal about sort of the little moves and the big impact they have and how we can systemically continue in that cycle of improvement. And part of that is the healthy accountability peer-to-peer, adult to adult in the building and how we're sort of treating one another. You can see some of the next steps that we have there. Something that's not listed, and both Chris and Erica mentioned this a little bit, is we're also seeing these two-year bands with our school growth plan.
160We had the school growth plan of 2224. The focus actually was very much on how a lesson starts. It was about learning targets. It was about essential outcomes and talked about that sort of element of the lesson. This two-year plan is much about the work chunk of the lesson. We're talking about discourse. We're talking about what happens in the chunk in the middle. I would not be surprised if by the time you see us in the fall, we're talking about the closure or the wrap part of the lesson as part of our sort of guiding light in the next two-year version so that we can bring all three of those components together. And we think that's a really exciting sort of discovery that we're having. Yeah, absolutely. Uh I'm very interested in the transition of
161uh with a a personal communications device. Um how now that we've we're many months in, how is that going? What are you seeing? Uh there are similar to a question I asked you guys a couple months ago. either of you interested >> it it it's going really well. um part part of what Steve mentioned a second ago about the empowering minds grant and maybe the kids that want to share their experience there we're having some listening sessions and in those listening sessions um it came out uh yesterday or the day before like yeah we really understood the why with the with the cell phones and the PC PCD and we really see the impact we get it they're a little bit more uh on the on the edge about the ear the earbuds and some
162changes we made at semester but I we have pickup at the end of the day for kids who have infractions and we had buckets of them and we have one or two at most and it's I think it's been a game changer for kids and teaching and halls and lunches are louder which okay but um it it it palpable difference in the building for sure and and I think kids are really bought in whether they love it or not they get why and they see the value. Thank you. And >> I I would that I would be remiss if we didn't just appreciate the partnership with our parents and our families that are with that. Um part of the second step and then uh is is the second time we have a violation. Parents do
163need to come pick that up. Um so we do recognize, you know, the potential burden that potentially faces on families. But it has been interesting to hear number of parents that have said, you know, just keep it come get it later this week and we'll talk tonight a secure place to store that. So um but it has been uh again we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that as well just the partnership with with families and uh and behind from from parents and guardians >> perhaps an extension of that which I found to be somewhat amusing actually is that PTA each month kind of has asked about that and I was waiting for the opportunity to report that we had a data with zero and it took until last month but I was able to
164say we had a day with zero infractions and and I do think all sort of joking aside it really as you can see just observationally a change in behavior and that I do believe that ultimately that was our goal. If I think back to this time a year ago as we were starting to plan implementation knowing that it would be a lift and that it would also change the way students experience their presence with one another which is why the the loud cafeteria was really quite such an adjustment. But it it really is quite amazing to see. And I think maybe just to our work tonight, it the other key part that we've all would mention is that it wouldn't work if we weren't all on the same page. And that would I think colleagues
165said that colleagues are going to each other like hey you you can't do that in there because it makes it hard for me second hour and it allows Chris and I to have those conversations and know that um when you're doing it we have your back and if you don't like we're ready to have those conversations but then we can see what happens when we do come together and have some of those same expectations. So I think maybe that's kind of a launch point for maybe instructional practices and instructional conversations as well. pick you back up for Chris here because the observations you have that it just seems natural that the the elevation of the volume of the lunchroom you're seeing that experiencing that. Have you taken any thought or done anything there to gather
166any data while inside of that the students on both the cultural parts that come with that talking more communication how you're interacting with each other how you're interacting not with just your peers but with everybody that you're you're there with now. So rather than just seeing and and knowing like much louder in here now by X number of decibels, what are we gathering from that or can we gain anything from that from the students within those that experience? >> Yeah, this is this is good news for me because I I was on the other side of like it's going to work like resistance is going to be there. is one of those parents with you know my kids don't have any devices other than an Apple Watch but even my 11-year-old like it's he he's
167he has become very responsible with his Apple Watch and but he goes steps to Lincoln and it's like as he's walking I watch from the the curb the stairs it's routine before I get to the doors my watch is off and I'm sticking either in the side pocket of my bag and I zip up and I always wonder like do I take them out when they get inside it's just like a thing I'm saying but it's working. So, there's something to be said and I just get curious about how much more cultural interaction happens amongst the student population now that we have those things out of the way. They can focus on each other dialogue, you know, even their own discourse of other things. If they're working through, if we're seeing there's a a correlation
168between how they're interacting or or the things that we saw previously that may not we may not be seeing now. I don't I don't know if I can specifically answer that question, but I I will say um I know that the topic of cell phones and PCDs on campus has come up um in one of our deans of students, Carlos Romo and um I believe Leah Grant is part of that as well. Um our mental health coordinator are doing some listening sessions with students. In fact, I sat in on the first part of one today for a few minutes. Um and I do know that that that topic has come up around just the the difference that the PCDs and not having them has been. Um I I appreciate you asking that question because that's
169it's a that's certainly something we can follow up with with Carlos about. Um I know he has just shared anecdotally those listening sessions have been insightful um beyond what he was anticipating. So um I I guess I don't know if I can specifically answer that but I know I I'm that topic has come up in those in those sessions and I'm certainly curious to hear a summary of what uh just the totality of of those comments are about. >> I think that would be great feedback for the district. So then I think that's not just here but where it goes beyond and outside of our district where people actually have like oh this is an aha moment and we learned this and it wasn't that our our staff and administration said this this was feedback
170drawn from our student population of we live this we went through this we started here got to there and this is where we are now. Just think that's that's powerful information. What I was just going to add that one thing we we do see uh as students are sort of moving about the the building is kind of a a two-part one is there there's some games being literally games fun games uno cribage like some old school kind of card games between kids and you're you can observe this social interaction and if you sit down um I I've played a few hands with with some of them just for for fun and you can tell that they're allowing themselves this sort of space as a reprieve from sort of the academic rigor of the day which
171for which is intense. And the other thing that I had not seen before the PCD um this year in particular was was kids huddling around a table and doing school work while they're having their lunch and having pretty intellectual discourse about hey well we were doing this in class and oh I know you did that with a different teacher a different hour but they're kind of back and forth sort of reliving how they feel about a topic or something that they were working on or maybe an assignment that's coming due. So that is a bit anecdotal and yet that is what they're doing and you can see it firsthand. So if somebody were to ask like well what has been on the back end of that experience I would talk about the way that they're
172experiencing school much differently. I would love to and I think we're going to get this as we do more listening sessions with students how it's affecting the behavior. all of the back and forth that had had previously gone on between kids on social media and texting, it at least pauses now during the day. And I think we're seeing that in types of like physical aggression and responses to one another and some of the bickering that might go on that we don't see that's invisible because it's happening in the air. And so that I don't know that we see that in the numbers yet, right? Um, but I do think anecdotally we're seeing that kids are more able to sit with us and have restorative conversations because it hasn't sort of blossomed out into the world
173of social media as of yet. >> Yep. >> Same topic, different topics. >> Okay. Because I have a different topic, but I'll wait for you. >> Well, I have same topic. Um, I would just just briefly share that anecdotally all of the high schoolers that come through my house are they have told me that they're like afraid to even take their phone out of the mall to take pictures cuz they're like there's a pause even outside of school like should I be on my phone right now? >> Um, and they are playing all of those games. They're like playing some tag game after you know the dance a couple weeks ago. So, I think it is changing the way they think about cell phones. And I just I think our district it could be a
174statewide leader in how we've implemented this because I have friends across the state who teach in different districts and they all struggle with it even if there's a bell to bell. Um so just something to think about. I think we're state leaders in this space. So kudos to everyone who's been working this year um to make it such a success. Um my only other question is clarifying for the increases in um English and math. Where did you what uh what was the metric? >> That was part of our star data. >> Oh, thank you. And over year over year. >> Yeah. And so if you if you're like looking on the on the scorecard, you'll see it more explicitly explained on the scorecard. Okay. Y Thank you. You bet. >> I wanted to ask um
175about uh the D's and Fs. The numbers are going down. What are the strategies you're using? Um and has it given you some ideas about what you might do next to continue to lower those numbers? >> I would I would like to say that part of the strategy is what's coming through the school growth plan in terms the teachers reflection around discourse and and student engagement. true active engagement by students. I also believe sort of equal to that is our communication and hopefully early communication. So part of that working with the district this year 20-day, 40-day, 60-day letters home. So we had been doing that about attendance. Now we're doing it about academics as well. And in addition to that, really sort of upping the expectation and the accountability for teachers, one to keep their
176gradebook up to date every two weeks and to then be communicating with parents anytime the grade falls below a C. Those those initiatives are new now that I do believe is impacting this. I know there's been some some wonder about the arc of grades percentage of ABCDF in terms of grade distribution as it pertains to recent sort of changes in sort of the structure and system of grading. We don't have any evidence to support that. It looks very similar to how it did a couple of years ago and to in terms of total overall distribution. We're trying to minimize we would like to say we'd like to see more A's and B's. we do end up defaulting to. We're trying to minimize the failures. And so by reality, that's what we're that's what we're hoping
177to see. But part of that's the instructional I just grit of what is going on between teachers and kids. And the other part, I think, is the communication. >> Is the district um able to help you or are you keeping track of um target groups and disproportionality? >> We do. Yes. >> Around that. And any observations? We are still not doing uh we're not closing that gap particularly for our black students and our students with special needs. Um that that remains I want to say static. There have been some es and flows where it's been better and then more challenging. Um part of that uh we just noticed actually within days that we saw an interesting peak for our freshmen in in January and and so now there's a wonder of like how do we
178more deeply investigate that and is that actually related to the change in the semester we recognize that as we approach exams and we go through sort of that window of the end of the semester and a new one starting some kids are like well I'm failing anyways so I'm I'm out right and and so we want to now dive into that. Um I think the win that I would point out is that we have the data and a lot of folks don't they simply don't they don't have the infrastructure built to do that whereas we can see it uh pretty easily. >> Yeah. I mean if you're seeing that among your freshmen it's really their first time with that experience of >> um going through final exams. It's a different feel than what they had
179in in middle school. Um one last just followup. Uh, I I really like the idea of having the teachers track their outreach. I think that's something that I've heard from a lot of parents is and I don't know how much it's the parents not noticing the outreach or how much it is that it not happening. And I think that's a great next step um for all of our secondary schools to be paying attention or trying where they can to track that process of reaching out to parents. What can we learn from that? Um what can we do better? What is going well? Great. Looks like we came to the end of our uh >> Thank you. Thank you. >> our school reports. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for being here. >> Okay, the time is
1807:43 p.m. May I have a motion to adjurnn? >> Move to adjurnn. Thank you Elizabeth and Morris down. I will um call the role. Miss Przinski. >> Yes. >> Mr. Bower. >> Yes. >> Miss Bach. >> Mr. Morris. >> Yes. >> Miss Hammer Roland. >> Yes. >> I'm a yes. Mr. Vir. >> Yes. And the motion carries. And thank you all for being here.